Abstract

The purpose of this research is to establish the impact of ethical leadership in enhancing trust and contributing to the improvement of OCB among employees in the manufacturing organizations of Pakistan. Ethical leadership has been established to play a critical in generating trust and encouraging self-generated positive behaviours in organisations. A cross-sectional survey research design was adopted whereby data was gathered from 200 employees and the findings confirmed a positive correlation between ethical leadership, trust and organizational citizenship behaviour. The study shows that employees only have faith in leaders who exercise ethical behaviour and that faith will compel the employees to go the extra mile and be more than ordinary in their duties. Consistent with other work, the findings of the study point to both the direct and indirect effects of ethical leadership on the various organisational variables. According to these findings, the recommendations given to the organizations are the need to encourage leadership to take an ethical dilemma lesson, encourage communication, and ensure performance appraisal is done on ethical behaviour. Such tactics may be useful in rolling out the ethos of cooperation and trust that will improve overall organisational performance.